>You sound like one of the rich boys that think $5.15 an hour is too much for the working poor.<

What’ this got to do with jobs leaving the country seeking cheaper labor?

Oh yeah that’s right, when a liberal sees someone that disagrees with them they have to discredit that person some how by attaching them personally. …. Heheh Forgot there for a minute.

Dagger, how many times have you taken your life savings and put it on the line and created jobs for people? How many people have you given jobs, minimum wage jobs, to that have gone on become very successful and even "richer" then you are?

You got one thing right, you're wrong about me working for the government.

Most government workers take a civil service exam or two (or a lot) to get their job, make no more or often less than comparable non government employees, and then have to put up with whining schleps that if they had their choice would structure a society like that in David Copperfield

If all the atheists left the United States it would lose 93% of the National Academy of Sciences but less than 1% of the prison population.

Dagger, you forgot to include: …and all to often have no idea how the real world works, or how the money is made through CAPIITILSM, something most liberals and or government employees think is a dirty word, even though it’s success is the only way they can possibly get paid in their no-cut, often "cushiony", no risk job.

Not all of them and thankfully not even most of them… but way too many of them…. High on the list of my most respected professions are Police, Firefighters and educators in public schools K-12. These government employees usually have more then first hand idea on how the real world works.

There has many studies to show that this is just not the case. In fact, in many areas, government employees are paid far higher then their private sector counterparts especially when benefits and tenure are figured in. In some case they deserve it and in others they do not. Of course that’s matter of opinion everyone has their own right to.

Take public school teachers for instance. They get a lot more then the average private school pays. And they deserve much more then they are getting. Ditto for police and private firefighters. Again not in all case but in most. And again the deserve more then we currently pay them.

In other cases some government employees shouldn’t get paid a dime… like the entire Department of Education at the Federal and State levels… they should all be put out of work, period! ahhahahahahhaha

I have worked for both public and private both educational and non-educational sectors. In general the private pay more in wages and benefits so you might want to revisit your sources (not that anyone expects accuracy from you anyway).

"Know ye not why We created you all from the same dust? That no one should exalt himself over the other." -Baha'u'llah

Flosum: Try this. I consider myself to be moderate-to-liberal in my politics. Nevertheless, I am a confirmed capitalist; I strongly endorse a free market economy. However, that presumes that it is truly a free market. When various forces attempt to limit or eliminate competition, all bets are off. With that in mind, perhaps you watched as I did the Sunday evening edition of 60 minutes with its report on how Haliburton, Kellogg/Brown/Root, and Bechtel have managed to "win" billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to provide various services in Iraq. One example. Various qualified American contractors contacted the Pentagon as early as December, 2002, to inquire about contracts to put out oil fires should America go to war with Iraq. Saddam Hussein has a track record for starting such fires. All of them were told by the Pentagon that we were not expecting such fires. In the meantime and in secret, the Pentagon was in the process of awarding Haliburton a $7 billion contract to -- among other things -- put out oil fires in Iraq. Why the secrecy? The Pentagon's response, "It was classified." Why was it classified? Everybody knows that Saddam Hussein starts oil fires. The answer: "It was classified because it was classified." (!!!) Nothing illegal because under then Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney in the early 1990s, the rules were re-written for procurement. Subsequently, Dick Cheney became CEO of Halliburton and expanded their Pentagon contracts to over 2600. They can charge what they like because they provide their own oversight. Thus far, Halliburton has made a profit of over $1 billion on Iraq contracts with much more to come. Capitalism, free enterprise, open markets? Ask the contractor from San Antonio, Texas, who tried to bid on putting out oil fires -- which he did during the first Iraqi War -- and wasn't given a chance to bid. He alleged in the "60 minutes" report that Halliburton was charging more than double the cost for that work than was necessary. During World War II, similar stories of exploitation of the war for profit produced the Truman Commission which aggressively investigated and prosecuted any efforts to unfairly limit competition, provide shoddy equipment, or inflate prices. Cheney and company need to have their activities brought out into the light of day for everyone to see. And, of course, this kind of information raises still further questions about the reasons the Bush Administration was so eager to go to war with Iraq.

Bush went to war to give Halliburton a contract to put out fires? Some one would have to be a complete idiot to even suggest that.

Let me tell you about 60 minutes.

A very close friend and past client of mine was pressured by 60 minutes to go on their show and lie about having seen his girl friend’s father beat her and her mother when they were dating. The mother shot and killed the father years later and 60 minutes was trying to get her out of jail as a justifiable shooting based on spousal abuse.

60 minutes was not interested in the truth, which included the fact that the mother was the one that was beating the daughter, not the other way around. They went with their story, bogus as it was. They appeared in court to help the women get out of jail. They were not successful.

It seems the judge and jury were no more ready to buy 60 Minute’s bs then I am yours.

But keep it coming… man that stuff is funny!!! Better then the funny papers!!

Flosum and Kerry: I'm not suggesting that you or anyone "accept everything that you hear or read or see," nor am I suggesting that "60 minutes" is always accurate in what they report. Nevertheless, the "60 minutes" report included factual data that is corroborated from any number of sources. Halliburton and its allied companies did receive a number of very lucrative contracts for "infrastructure repair" in Iraq that were no-bid contracts. They were allowed to enter into contracts well before other contractors were even contacted. They were not the only qualified contractors for that work. For example, a number of companies were contracted to put out fires after the first Iraq war and performed well. But were not contacted and were, in fact, told by the Pentagon that oil fires were not expected in the war with Iraq. This occurred AFTER Halliburton had been contacted and given a contract to put out oil fires. And, this action by the Pentagon was justified under the aegis of a "classified" procedure. Why should such a matter be classified? Well, that's classified. It's one thing to develop a healthy skepticism about public information. It's is another thing entirely to dismiss it because it doesn't come from a favored source or does not jibe with existing prejudices. It was Ronald Reagan who said that "facts are persistent things; no matter whether we like them or not, they don't just go away." You want to argue with these facts, let's see what you've got that demonstrates that they are untrue.

Bob, I have no desire to enter into any sort of debate with you about the credibility of 60 Minutes. There is no debate about their credibility; they simply don’t have any. Not with me. No more then them blogs you or others post. Blogs!! Ahahahaha… man that still crack me up Blogs!!! Ahahahahhaha!

But you may want to look into how many companies in the country are capable of putting those kinds of fires out. Also look at their viability as far as being able to finically carry out the operation.

You don’t send out the local volunteer fire department with a $9 garden hose to douse those things.

I believe Boots and Coots was the one that put them out in the first war and they were one of the subs this time around. But they and others in the sector (if there are any) have fallen on hard times and Boots didn’t have the finical where with all to carry out the operation without a Halliburton as the lead agency to put up the funds.

I don’t have any problem at all with the security issue. Again, how many companies do you think there are that have the ability and the security clearances to do this kind of work?

If you have a list, I’d appreciate it. May want to add them to my portfolio. For when we bomb the **** out of Iran or maybe even France!! ahhhahahahahaahaha

In short, Flosum, you're saying, "Don't confuse me with all of those messy and unsettling facts, I've made up my mind. You're right. There's no point in attempting to have an intelligent exchange under such conditions. You might want to look at Molly Ivins column for today about "Why People 'Hate' Bush," and you were I'm sure interested to learn from polls published just yesterday, that Dubya Bush has tumbled dramatically in his approval rating. According to polls just released, if an election were held now, both Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts AND General Wesley Clark would defeat George W. Bush. Some folks apparently don't ignore facts -- there are after all persistent.

Ok, that’s it, that does it for me, Bush is out… Dopey didn’t approve of him in the first place!! That’s good enough for me!! Ahahhaahhahahaa!!

News Flash: There are a number of states in the country where teachers are not covered under Social Security. And they don’t pay in either. They pay into a separate, and in some, if not all, much better retirement system. At the same time they can earn Social Security via jobs out side the school system and or self-employment. My has done just that.

News Flash 2: There probably isn’t a state in the country that doesn’t have children with special health needs that are not getting services. Or a country on the planet, for that matter.

>if an election were held now, both Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts AND General Wesley Clark would defeat George W. Bush<

And this should concern me because?? Ahahahaaahahahaha!!

I have continuously told you I was not and am not a big Bush fan. Just because someone doesn’t want to wallow around in the mud with the trash-talking members of the I hate Bush Club that does not make them a Bush supporter.

Incidentally, polls are not fact, they are opinion, as in opinion polls.

I’ll even go out on a limb here, I'll bet you 9 cents against your paid up membership to the I hate Busch Club, that neither Kerry or Clark are victorious in 2004.

I do not believe it will matter who gets put in the white house, If the person has a lot of money or comes from money things will never change for the better. I believe that the only way things will get better is if some poor working man or women gets a crack at it all. After all it takes someone who has had to pinch a penny to know how to use every penny they get to get the most benifit out of it. Think about it. If the person in charge of the United States had only a set limit to spend, they would have to make the best of it all. After all it has been proven that the working poor give until it hurts while the ones with the big bucks hold out for them selves more often than not. Maybe I am just a dreamer.

The last thing we need is someone that hasn’t figured out, or didn’t care to figure out how to be successful enough so they didn’t have to pinch pennies, trying to solve complex problems that are obviously out of their realm of understanding either by choice or lacking in ability.

Give me a break!!

As for poorer people being more philanthropic then rich, I don’t buy that either.

The penny pincher idea sounds great in concept, unfortunately, someone like this would have no idea how a big business works, much less an entire government.

This would be like telling a four year old to defuse a nuclear bomb. You would much rather have someone who has at least had some bomb squad training. I'll take a successful business person as president pretty much any day over someone who has never been invovled in running a business and appears to be having a difficult time running their own life!